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This chapter sets the stage for the second half of the book by explaining how late medieval scholastics understood action (a species of which is producing). Like change, action was understood in broadly Aristotelian terms: one thing performs an action when it causes a change in something else. This, however, requires that the agent has the power to bring about the relevant change in the recipient. So what does it mean to have a certain kind of power? Medieval scholastics believed the agent must have the right constituents to serve as the basis or source of its power. It would seem from this,...

This chapter sets the stage for the second half of the book by explaining how late medieval scholastics understood action (a species of which is producing). Like change, action was understood in broadly Aristotelian terms: one thing performs an action when it causes a change in something else. This, however, requires that the agent has the power to bring about the relevant change in the recipient. So what does it mean to have a certain kind of power? Medieval scholastics believed the agent must have the right constituents to serve as the basis or source of its power. It would seem from this, then, that a divine person can be a producer only if it has the power to produce another person, and that involves having the right sort of constituent(s) to serve as the basis or source of that power.